I have
posted below some characteristic quotes by NT Wright, former Bishop of Durham in
the Church of England, and chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at the
School of Divinity, St. Andrews. Wright taught Biblical studies at Cambridge,
McGill, and Oxford Universities. He is a
popular author and speaker but does not understand the Gospel as he should.
In an interview in Christianity Today in
2007, for instance, Wright said, "Because the great emphasis in the New
Testament is that the gospel is not how to escape the world; the gospel is that
the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of the world. And that his death and
Resurrection transform the world, and that transformation can happen to you.
You, in turn, can be part of the transforming work. That draws together what we
traditionally called evangelism, bringing people to the point where they come
to know God in Christ for themselves, with working for God’s kingdom on earth
as it is in heaven. That has always been at the heart of the Lord’s Prayer, and
how we’ve managed for years to say the Lord’s Prayer without realizing that
Jesus really meant it is very curious."
Of course, escape is a completely valid
way to conceive of the Gospel message.
It is the very word used on numerous occasions in the literature:
You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are
you to escape being sentenced to hell? (Matthew 23:33 ESV)
But stay awake at all times, praying that
you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place,
and to stand before the Son of Man.” (Luke 21:36 ESV)
Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those
who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the
judgment of God? (Romans 2:3 ESV)
No temptation has overtaken you that is not
common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your
ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that
you may be able to endure it. (I Corinthians 10:13 ESV)
While people are saying, “There is peace and
security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon
a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. (I Thessalonians 5:3)
[T]hey may come to their senses and escape
from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.
(II Timothy 2:26 ESV)
[H]ow shall we escape if we neglect such a
great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to
us by those who heard, (Hebrews 2:3 ESV)
See that you do not refuse him who is
speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on
earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven.
(Hebrews 12:25 ESV)
The most powerful of human instincts,
which all living beings possess, is to survive.
All living things have some form of intelligence that serves that
desire. But human beings, made in the
image and likeness of God, are also spiritual beings; therefore, we utilize rational
self-interest at cosmic and complex levels to seek our eternal welfare. That
kind of thinking is called in the Greek phronesis; it is a learned behavior and
required to understand Scripture. The
beatitude of Scripture is that God wants us to maximize our chances of
happiness, which ultimately means to live forever with him, which is the first
duty of man. Therefore, God communicates
to us the facts as he sees them, calling us to “flee the wrath to come.” (Luke
3:7 and I Thessalonians 1:10)
What must we do to escape? The first word of the Kerygma (proclamation
of the Gospel) is repentance, the reason being the immanent destruction of the
world and all the sinners in it, which, according to Biblical prophecy is an
essential prerequisite for the coming kingdom. When we pray for the kingdom to come on Earth
as it is in Heaven we are asking for the end of this world and the dawn of the
age to come. Therefore, to enter the
kingdom we are called to escape judgment, the sin that causes it to fall upon
us, and finally, the proximate causes of sin, namely: the world, the flesh, and
the devil. That’s why the Lord’s Prayer
asks that we not be led into temptation but delivered from evil.
A faithful exposition of the New Testament
would address these root causes of sin – first, the world, because confusion
about the world hinders truly effective Christian ministry and discipleship. Repentance with regard to the world is
detachment (see I Corinthians 7:31 below).
The Christ event is meant to transform us
individually, who, like Jesus and in following him, die to the world as the
world dies to us (Galatians 6:14) by the renewal not of the social environment
but of our own way of thinking about things (Romans 12:1-3). There is no prospect of our transforming the
world because that is not God’s plan.
God’s plan is to destroy this world in favor of a new one, populated by
a new kind of humanity, which he is now preparing through Christ, who will
return to execute the judgments of God and complete the salvation of his people. This lack of an apocalyptic vision is the
chief weakness of Wright’s thought. So,
let us review what Scripture actually says about the nature and subsequent fate
of world as we know it.
This
is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on,
let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn
as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not
rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who
deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present
form of this world is passing away. (1 Corinthians 7:29-31 ESV)
In their case the god of this world has
blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the
gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (II Corinthians 4:4
ESV)
But far be it from me to boast except in the
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me,
and I to the world. (Galatians 6:14 ESV)
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following
the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons
of disobedience— (Ephesians 2:1-2 ESV)
If with Christ you died to the elemental
spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you
submit to regulations— (Colossians 2:20 ESV)
The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinner, of whom I am the foremost. (I Timothy 1:15 ESV)
For Demas, in love with this present world,
has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus
to Dalmatia. (II Timothy 4:10 ESV)
In these
passages it seems that Paul has no interest in “making the world a better
place.” He conceives of Jesus saving
sinners and folding us into a Church. In
the Greek “church” is ekklesia,
referring those “called out” of the world.
But what might others say? Is the
Church an ark of salvation, for instance?
It appears so.
By faith Noah, being warned by God
concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the
saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of
the righteousness that comes by faith. (Hebrews 11:7 ESV)
Some were tortured, refusing to accept
release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered
mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they
were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of
sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not
worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the
earth. (Hebrews 11:35-38 ESV)
You adulterous people! Do you not know that
friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a
friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. (James 4:4 ESV)
For if God did not spare angels when they
sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness
to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but
preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a
flood upon the world of the ungodly … For if, after they have escaped the
defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has
become worse for them than the first. (II Peter 2:4-5 & 20 ESV)
For they deliberately overlook this fact,
that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and
through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that
then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the
heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the
day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. (II Peter 3:5-7 ESV)
Do not love the world or the things in the
world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of
the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father
but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires,
but whoever does the will of God abides forever. (I John 2:15-17 ESV)
See what kind of love the Father has given
to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why
the world does not know us is that it did not know him. (I John 3:1 ESV)
Do not be surprised, brothers, that the
world hates you. (I John 3:13 ESV)
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but
test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have
gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit
that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and
every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of
the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little
children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is
greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they
speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God.
Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us.
By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error. (1 John 4:1-6 ESV)
For everyone who has been born of God
overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our
faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that
Jesus is the Son of God? (I John 5:4-5 ESV)
We know that we are from God, and the whole
world lies in the power of the evil one. (I John 5:19 ESV)
For many deceivers have gone out into the
world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a
one is the deceiver and the antichrist. (II
John 1:7 ESV)
That’s
enough, or should be enough, to show that the world is beyond hope, doomed, in
the power of evil, and that we should not waste our time trying to make it a
better place. Rather, we ought to do as
Jesus did, who came to seek and save lost souls, yes, to escape the world, its
temptations and entanglements.
In the Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering …
Wright says, “Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped,
Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to
announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce
healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and
trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion…”
I suppose
that if the world ever “discovered its fallenness” there might be hope of love
and trust but that is not the Gospel analysis as the passages above indicate
with undeniable clarity. One might forgive an individual that is merely
naïve about the nature of the world and its future. But in the quote to follow we see an agenda. In Surprised
by Hope Wright says, "Hope is what you get when you suddenly realize
that a different worldview is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the
powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word. The same
worldview shift that is demanded by the resurrection of Jesus is the shift that
will enable us to transform the world.”
I am always suspicious of those that
demonize the rich/powerful and link those persons with “unscrupulous” behavior
… and then want to “transform the world” … all in one sentence! I suppose it’s because the carnal poor and
the carnal rich look the same to me. But
carnal vs. spiritual is not the primary distinction in the Marxist religion as
it is in Christianity. Christian cosmic
and moral dualism is the shift that the death and resurrection of Jesus inspire,
not transforming the world.
How might we explain Wright’s error? I think that the bishop represents a kind-of
cultural Christianity that fails fully to embrace the future judgment of God
upon the world. He serves in an official
national Church and may be deceived by the historic sanction of European monarchs,
Constantine, Theodosius, and Henry VIII, to name the succession. Calling that kind of political entanglement “a
transformation of the world” is highly questionable from a historic perspective. While the advancement of Western culture was
facilitated by the Church and, conversely, the Church provided its major themes
and motifs, it is difficult to ignore abuses such as suppression of the
Donatists, the Crusades, Inquisition, Indulgences, and the crimes of Conquistadors
in the New World. The Christianization
of Roman law and administration counts as wisdom in most cases but it hardly
satisfy the Biblical injunction to make disciples of all nations. In fact the geo-political definition of
“nations,” as Wright well knows, is not the New Testament teaching at all. In Biblical parlance “nations” simply means
all kinds of non-Jewish folk. At one
point the Jews themselves became just another “nation” that needed conversion (Acts
4:23-31).
But again, whereas traditional Western
society has its problems, new Left Wing political regimes, aided and abetted by
the Higher Critical Method in Biblical studies, are in no way a manifestation
of Christian morals but are a positive evil in the world, which will suffer the
wrath of God for their atheistic murderous thefts and revolutionary outrages
against the demonized “rich.”
What we must realize is that Wright not
only represents a national Church but a liberal one. All of Western Europe and the mainline
denominations of America have embraced the Social Gospel with its Marxist
analysis, defining the kingdom of God in socio-economic terms. Scripture says, though, “The kingdom of God
is not meat and drink but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy
Spirit.” (Romans 14:17) Jesus told Pilate that the kingdom was “not
of this world.” (John 18:36) Jesus never uttered a word about social justice. His ethical admonitions, from the Golden Rule to the Sermon on the Mount to the Great Commission to the Law of Love, are a personal and ecclesiastical rule. Standing before Herod, Jesus might have
harangued him about social justice but said not a word, indicating no respect
whatsoever for a man that murdered his cousin.
That is what the world always does; and so, we might get a clue – this world is
not a nice place and according to Christian prophecy never will be.
I understand the temptation to shoe-horn
Jesus into the prevailing ethos of a particular Church group. But when that group is fundamentally flawed,
as is the Church of England and others to which I’ve alluded, one must take a
prophetic posture, not necessarily an academic one. A prophetic posture is not possible unless
one understands the eternal divine consequences of bad doctrine and morals.
In Surprised by
Hope, Wright misses that mark entirely, saying, “All Christian language
about the future is a set of signposts pointing into a mist.”
No, the signposts accurately describe what will happen and
several things are quite clear, taken at face value. Jesus says, for instance that the Gospel must
first be preached to all nations (understood as above as all kinds of people)
then the end will come (Matthew 24:14).
He also says that there will be astronomical and meteorological events
that serve as signs. He never says
anything about the nation-state of Israel but puts forth the rough outline of
Christian prophecy in terms of our being both persecuted and effective in
spreading his word (Mark 13:11). The
hope he gives is that we will be raised from the dead as he was (I Corinthians
15). But if some of us are alive at his
coming there will be a rapture, as it has been called. The rapture is not the prelude to a new
dispensation, though. It is merely a
practical answer to what happens to us when Christ returns if we are not yet
dead and buried:
But we do not want you
to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve
as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose
again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen
asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who
are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those
who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with
a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the
trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are
alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet
the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore
encourage one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 ESV)
Finally, there is the fearful prospect of judgment by fire. We know, of course, that Scripture uses fire
metaphorically with two meanings: purification and judgment. But let us suppose for an instant that some
references to fire in the New Testament, especially in Christian prophecy, are
meant literally. With the proliferation
of nuclear weapons and missile technology the metaphors morph into credible
threats to human existence. The only
thing required to set it off is a complete moral and diplomatic breakdown among
nations. Similarly, one needs only to
look at the Moon to see the effects of near Earth asteroids. We know that some have hit the Earth
before. What happened to the dinosaurs
could happen to us! Additionally, helio astronomers
tell us that a massive solar flare could annihilate planet Earth. Catastrophism is a valid interpretive
principle when considering Christian end time predictions. I will close with three of them:
“And there will be
signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in
perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people
fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world. For the
powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of
Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things
begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your
redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21:25-28 ESV)
This is evidence of
the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom
of God, for which you are also suffering—since indeed God considers it just to
repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are
afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with
his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do
not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They
will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of
the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be
glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed,
because our testimony to you was believed. To this end we always pray for
you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every
resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of
our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace
of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 1:5-12 ESV)
They will say, “Where
is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all
things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” For they
deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the
earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and
that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are
stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the
ungodly.
But do not overlook
this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a
thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as
some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should
perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will
come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the
heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works
that are done on it will be exposed.
Since all these things
are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of
holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God,
because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the
heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we
are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. (2
Peter 3:4-13 ESV)
